bvdub | Brock Van Wey :: In Iron Houses (EC Underground)

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Whether it’s the soulful nature of his vocal samples, or the lush and downtempo beats that give it all a skeleton to cascade off of, or the exquisite synthetic textures throughout, bvdub has found his vein of gold and continues to mine it without relent.

So emotionally resonant it is hard to turn away

My first exposure to the work of bvdub came from his releases on the essential label Glacial Movements. I Remember (Translations of Mørketid) (2015), and The Art of Dying Alone (2010) were watershed moments for my own ambient music listening experience. Most fans of bvdub have experienced a similar moment of first exposure. Perhaps it was the voices, oh the fucking beautiful voices. That’s what got me. Sourced from who knows where, sung, by who knows who—maybe Brock Van Wey can tell us?—they elicit such a strong emotional response it is hard not to be swept away into the entirety of his albums. Listening to bvdub can be dangerous, because there is no doubt in my mind that when I do, I will be absorbed, every single time, into his singular sound world.

But perhaps, for other listeners, it isn’t the voices that suck them in, but the other resplendent glistening textures that evolve and move through the work. They could be synth pads or piano keys, or the recurring motif of a plucked string, but whatever they are they captivate and absorb the imagination. If bvdub were a superhero this would be his special power. But the culture doesn’t need anymore superheroes. Give me more emotionally connected musicians any day.

Such textures open up immediately on the latest album In Iron Houses. The first track “Madness to their Methods” showcases the fact that, whatever his exact compositional methods are inside the studio, there is indeed a madness to it. A blessed kind of madness. “Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light” as Grouch Marx once said. There is a recurring noisy electrical sound, like some kind of electromagnetic distortion that recurs throughout this piece. It isn’t harsh noise, anything but, yet it does carry a slight sense of menace or fear. Perhaps the fear of being locked up and the key thrown away. Maybe that’s not the kind of madness bvdub is referring to at all, but as a song, it’s perfect.

“The Broken Fixing The Broken” begins with soft wash of watery sound, then silken slivers of a lightly distorted melody before those voices come in, all of it building to a pressure before a slowed down break begins to loop. Most of the time I can’t exactly discern what the voices are singing, but here a looped voice sings “don’t let him see me breaking” with such poignance. There is so much going on, so many details that reveal on repeated listens. And its an experience worth repeating.

Scattered drums move through kinetic spheres ::

Perhaps for some listeners, it’s also the beats that drag them in. His music has been called deep house before. Even though I love techno and electronica, I was never much of a clubber. Dub house was about closest I got to a house of any kind. Or Acid House. Somewhere between The Orb and Psychic TV was my comfortable frame of reference. But if this is deep house, it goes way deep. All the way to the basement and many stories below to the experimental bedrock beneath. Maybe this one isn’t even deep house at all. It is after all an Iron House.

Scattered drums move through kinetic spheres of raw emotion on “Iron Houses at Night.” The track is saturated with a feeling of melancholy, yet there is a vitriol that stirs, wishing to awaken people from the spell of melancholy. bvdub got the title for his album from the Chinese writer Lu Xun who wrote:

“Imagine an in indestructible iron house… without windows… without doors… but with countless people fast asleep inside, awaiting a death without air. You know if they die in their sleep, they will leave this earth without pain.

And so, if you cry aloud to wake the lighter sleepers, only to bestow upon them the agony of experiencing their irrevocable death, are you doing them a good turn?
If even a few stir, however, there will always exist a hope the house can be destroyed…”

Those words from 1922, translated by Brock Van Wey, hover around this album, haunting it with their question.

The last piece, “Perpetual Emotion Machine” continues the sonic bath of pure electronic empathy. Beats and distortion all build up to a blissful melody that makes me feel like I might just be waking up.

I really appreciate that bvdub generally goes in for long-form tracks. There are four of them on this release that each clock in just under twenty minutes—perfect to put out on a CD as the label EC Underground has done. No doubt, I do love vinyl and tape, but CD is a perfect medium for this kind of music. The music is digital and so is the format. It sings with clarity as light reads the information off the spinning disc. 80 minutes is just about enough to also get totally entranced by his latest work, before it makes me go down the rabbit hole and hunt for other albums of his I haven’t experienced yet.

bvdub has pursued music that’s so emotionally resonant it is hard to turn away. It wouldn’t be untrue to say there is such gravitas in his sounds that putting on a record might be the equivalent of going into a sacred space. With his masterful use of repetitious loops and minimalist structures its no wonder that it easily transports the listener into the zone. Whether it’s the soulful nature of his vocal samples, or the lush and downtempo beats that give it all a skeleton to cascade off of, or the exquisite synthetic textures throughout, bvdub has found his vein of gold and continues to mine it without relent.

In Iron Houses is available on EC Underground. [Bandcamp]